1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to organizing and retaining information associated with food products. In particular, the present invention relates to characterizing the nutritional value of foods in a standardized way, establishing food nutritional value designations, and presenting that information in a readily observable manner.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Hannaford Bros. Co. of Scarborough, Me., an affiliate of the assignee of the present invention, has developed a system and method to assess and score food products based on nutritional value, which system and method are identified by the Guiding StarsSM mark. The system and method are described in detail in the priority application identified herein. The system requires a database of food product nutritional information used in an algorithm to determine a food nutrition score. Any commercially available databases suitable for use in the original development of the algorithm, comprised an insufficient number of products. Further, the required nutritional information had to be extracted manually and arranged in a form suitable for use with the algorithm. As a result of the inadequacy of the available information, the inventors recognized that a new database would be required in order to gather the type of information needed in the form needed for a comprehensive set of food items, including prepared foods.
While the initial development of the system involved the use of a sufficient number of sets of food nutritional data, it was soon discovered that the existing information available at the time did not: 1) include all food products offered to consumers; 2) include as much nutritional information as desired to fully implement the scoring algorithm; and 3) come in a form suitable for efficient processing through the scoring system. Therefore, what is needed is a food nutritional information gathering and storage system suitable to enable a comprehensive food nutritional value scoring system. Further, what is needed is such a gathering and storage system flexible enough to adapt to changes in nutritional information for any food product, including packaged and prepared foods. Yet further, what is needed is a food nutritional information gathering and storage system arranged to enable easy access to specific information of interest for any application of interest.